Menu

Honey, I’m home

It’s been a while since I posted here! I was hoping to be able to make some impromptu posts on my trip — maybe a photo with a few lines of what’s going on — but since my only electronic device with that capability was my phone, and every day I strove to conserve my phone’s battery for the key priority of Google Mapping public transit around each foreign city I was visiting — yeah, didn’t happen.

I wanted my first post back to be some nice poetic overview of the whole trip, with observations on what the major cities are like, but that really calls for pictures, and I haven’t had a chance yet to sort through them all (though they are in folders now). So that’s coming, hopefully within the next week. Also I’m really behind on book reviews.

Now I’ll just remark on how nice it is to come home, and that was a surprise to me — I expected to be much more despondent, concluding the two-week trip I’d been planning for seven months. While the trip was very good, I was relieved to get through it without my bag violated and my person intact despite reckless street crossings (my travel companion insisting that the cars won’t hit us, well in America they do hit you, I live in a city that’s one of the deadliest for pedestrians) — despite all the wonders of two weeks traveling, seeing cities I’ve longed to see, and especially two weeks outside, in the sun, and not in an office — it was good to come home.

My first day back, I drove around the neighborhood on a myriad of errands, and I delighted in all the small changes that had taken place in my absence. Oh look, someone graffitied that stop sign! How quaint.

The larger epiphany — unexpected, but reassuring — is that I genuinely do love my current home, neighborhood, and (by extension) my life. I already knew that my neighborhood is the best neighborhood in Houston, and as long as I do live bound within the greater metropolitan area, I will be in the Heights. But it was nice to realize that, contrary to my expectations, my ordinary daily life isn’t a desolate waste without a major trip to look forward to. That is not something to take for granted.